MC: You don't think that's a public relations ploy to get the Republicans in the midterm elections? And how are they going to maintain their 14 permanent bases in Iraq if they pull troops out? They just can't do that.

    JK: Right. And how is that being proven? Well, the insurgents are now responding, as they did right after Cheney's comment that the insurgency was in its last throes of effectiveness. Okay? And then they responded by killing a whole bunch of people.

    So now they come back and Casey says, "Well, if everything continues on track, we should be able to start the troop draw-down by next Spring, early next Spring and into the Summer." And how is the insurgency responding? It's like setting up an explosive device and blowing 14 Marines off the face of the earth.

    It's just unbelievable, and was, unfortunately, predictable, on the very elementary level of planning sustainment operations. And I don't know if it was just absolute ignorance or wishful thinking. And there is a vast difference between them, but either one of them, something was incorporated by the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, of what they thought that, as soon as they got to Baghdad and pulled those statues down, that everybody was going to be coming out waving American flags and throwing flowers? What kind of ignorance is this?

    Iraq was a huge country, and when you have people largely saying, now, "He may have been a dictator, but we were better under Saddam," this Administration needs to take notice. And at some point you have to say, "Stop the train, because it's completely derailed. How do we fix it?" But in an effort to do that, you have to admit that you made a few mistakes, and this Administration is not willing to admit any mistakes whatsoever.

    MC: You're writing a book. Do you have a publisher?

    JK: Yeah, Miramax. It's going to be published in November. I didn't get any kind of correspondence except to chastise me. When I was going out to San Francisco to speak to the University of San Francisco, the law school out there, that was in April, I got a form letter from the Chief of the Army Reserves warning me - warning me - about speaking about Abu Ghraib, and that everything was still under investigation. Well, shortly after I got back, I get a letter saying that he understands that I'm writing a book and I should submit the transcript for review.

    And my lawyer responded simply by telling him that I was a private citizen and I don't fall under the same requirements, which he had to acknowledge, because that's true. I'm not ignorant, and I'm not going to reveal any classified information in anything I write, but I don't need to, because the truth is the truth, and it doesn't have to be classified. It is definitely staggering, but the truth is the truth.

    Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

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